The Light in the Darkness (15 page)

“In other words,” Jennifer said, as dispassionately as ever despite the angry sparkle in her eyes. “I am not as hopelessly moronic as you originally believed me to be.”

That was, quite bluntly, so apt a condensation of what he had been about to say that Grey almost burst out laughing.
He restrained his humor, realizing that Jennifer was blazingly angry. She had been calm, too calm, ever since that night a week ago. Perhaps anger would be good for her. At any rate, it was better than the complete lack of expression that she had worn all too often this past week. Anger, he thought, was better than nothing. And he knew that he deserved it.

Deliberately, he provoked her further.

“Precisely,” he said, ruthlessly suppressing his urge to grin. “In fact, when I first met you I supposed you to be simple-minded. It was only later that I came to admire you for your intellect.”

“Indeed,” Jennifer said in a voice that was actually beginning to quiver with fury. “How curious. My impressions of you have been the reverse. I once believed you were intelligent. It is only recently that I have come to believe that you are simple-minded.”

At that insult—an insult that Grey would readily have strangled anyone else for—he gave vent to his amusement, throwing back his head and shouting with laughter. Jennifer watched him warily out of the corner of her eye, wondering about the sanity of a man who seemed cold and unyielding whenever she tried to make polite conversation, but who laughed when she was shockingly rude.

Grey wiped his eyes and shook his head, still chuckling. “Jennifer,” he said in a voice that still trembled with humor, “you are a remarkable young woman, as far from simple-minded as it is possible to be. I’m ashamed of my lack of perception whenever I remember how badly I misjudged you at the ordinary. Your mind is amazingly quick.”

Jennifer bit her lip, then accepted his words as the apology they were evidently intended to be. “Thanks to you,” she said honestly, “and the opportunities you’ve given me to learn. I can’t tell you how grateful I am—”

“Christ!” Grey swore, and to her utter surprise every trace of laughter disappeared from his features. “Don’t ever speak of gratitude to me again, damn you.
Gratitude!
What have you to be grateful for?”

Jennifer stared at the expression of self-loathing that had instantly replaced the amusement on his face, and she had the sudden shocking impression that he felt guilty about the night he had seduced her. That was why he had spent the last week teaching her to ride, trying in his awkward way to make conversation. And that was why he could not accept her gratitude.

Grey, she realized with surprise, actually had a conscience.

She found that she did not want him to continue berating himself for his actions. That night had been as much her fault as his. Led into romantic folly by the letters she had been reading, she had made a singularly idiotic assumption in thinking that he might actually be attracted to her. She had been a fool.

She decided to try to turn his mind away from his guilt, to try to keep the conversation going. Accordingly, she glanced down at the fine cloth of her scarlet habit, so different from the coarse prickly cloth she had worn at the ordinary. “Fine clothing?” she suggested practically.

Grey looked surprised at her light suggestion, then his habitual scowl returned. “You are not foolish or superficial enough to believe that clothing makes a particle of difference. Are you?”

“Those,” Jennifer observed in her best tutorial tone, a perfect imitation of Catherine’s teaching voice, “are the words of someone who has never worn homespun. It is not warm enough in the winter, and in the summertime it
itches
.” The grimace she made was eloquent.

Grey glanced down ruefully at the Holland linen of his shirt and the finely woven wool of his biscuit-colored knee breeches. “You have a point,” he acknowledged. “I’ve always worn fine clothing, and never thought twice about it. Money,” he added sourly, “has never been my family’s problem.”

“Then your childhood should have been a happy one,” she said softly.

He heard the unmistakable note of longing in her voice and stared at her intently. She sounded as though she’d
never experienced happiness, and as though she wished for it desperately. “It was not,” he admitted finally.

She seemed puzzled, as though unable to envision a family both wealthy and unhappy. “That is what Catherine said as well. You were both unhappy, then. Why?”

“Money does not confer happiness,” Grey responded harshly. “It may help you stay warm in the winter, but there is very little else it’s good for. After all”—he gestured expansively at the vast forest they rode through—“I am wealthy. Am I happy?”

“You don’t seem so.”

“You’re very astute, my dear. I am miserable. Money—material things—none of it has anything to do with happiness. At twenty-one I became betrothed to a woman, a woman I loved very much, and in order to please her, I utilized a small portion of the money my father left me in order to build her a house as beautiful as any in the colony, as grand as the governor’s mansion. I hired artisans and bought the best local furniture and had the best silver imported from England. And then—” He paused, then burst out, “Six months after I carried her over the threshold she died, and I was left with a spectacular, empty house, an enormous fortune—and nothing. Absolutely nothing. All the gold in the world is not worth one strand of her beautiful hair.”

Hearing the frustrated longing and passion in his voice, Jennifer was reminded once again of the young man who had written the letters she had read, a man who had designed and built a castle for his wife, a man who had given his heart once and who could never give it again. Edward Greyson, filled with poetry and fire. And once again she wished she could inspire that sort of enduring love. There was something very compelling about Grey when he spoke that way, something that she found irresistibly attractive.

Remembering what had befallen her the last time she had been swept away by the passion in his voice, she said coolly, “Nonetheless, money is a wonderful thing to have.”

“Wonderful” Grey repeated in scornful disgust. The torrent of emotion flooding his voice had been dammed up, and the bitter, distant man she had married was back. “That is what my father would have said—what he did say, more times than I could count.”

“Your father liked money?”

“Liked it, worshipped it, was mad about it. He cared nothing for Catherine and myself; he and Mother cared only for money. He married her to get his hands on her fortune, and he got exactly what he wanted—her money, but not her. Neither of them cared a fig for the other, but so long as they had money they were happy. At least, they thought they were happy.”

Jennifer’s mind painted a vivid picture of an ebony-haired little boy, growing up in a household where money was the only thing that mattered, the only way to purchase affection. A little boy who had grown into a man who tried to purchase his wife’s love with a grand house and furnishings. Fighting back her sympathy, she said slowly, “It seems to me that people of your class have no financial problems, so they have to manufacture their own troubles. Perhaps some people have a need to be miserable.”

Grey reined the bay stallion to an abrupt halt and stared balefully at her. “Are you suggesting that
I
have created my own problems?”

Jennifer brought her mare to a stop and looked at him thoughtfully. It was not in her nature to express her thoughts, but she saw in Grey a man who was suffering needlessly—a man she could not bear to see suffering. Gathering her courage, she said frankly, “Yes, I think perhaps you have.”

Grey shook his head, as if denying her words. “God, don’t you think I—I would have saved her if I could have?”

“Not that,” Jennifer said, realizing he was referring to Diana. “That was beyond your control. Death always is. But … Grey, it has been over seven years. People have to
mourn, but someday you have to get over the grief. You have to move on.”

A muscle jumped in Grey’s rigid jaw. “I don’t want to move on, damn it. Not without her.”

“My point exactly,” Jennifer persisted. “You may not want to move on, but you have no choice. Life doesn’t stop simply because the people you love die. You have to keep going. And you’re being held back, and controlled, by your drinking.”

Grey scowled darkly. “I drink because I want to,” he growled. “I can remember her more clearly—”

“Perhaps you used to drink because you wanted to,” Jennifer snapped, “but now you drink because you have to. It’s been so long that she’s fading from your memory, and you are trying desperately to hold on to her. You are creating your own problems, just as I said—so terrified of joy, so afraid of the slightest possibility of happiness, that you’re fighting to hold on to your misery.”

Grey abruptly urged his stallion into a canter. “What do
you
know about grief?” he snarled over his shoulder as she cantered after him. “Have you ever lost anyone you loved?”

Jennifer was silent for a moment, then decided to answer the question. “Yes. My family. When I was nine.”

Grey did not slow his horse as she came up beside him. “How did they die?”

Jennifer refused to look at him. “I do not wish to talk about it,” she said evenly.

“Indeed,” Grey responded coldly. “Then perhaps you can understand that I do not wish to speak of Diana’s death.”

Jennifer accepted the rebuke and said nothing more. It was impossible to get past Grey’s defenses. He wore anger and bitterness like a suit of armor. He did not care that she was concerned for him; he cared little for anything.

The only thing he had ever cared for was Diana. And Diana was gone forever.

•  •  •

“My dearest Diana …”

That afternoon, Jennifer found herself at her desk, reading the faded letters in Diana’s desk once again. Why she should torment herself so, she had no idea. The folded pieces of parchment told a love story—the only love story of Grey’s life. Perhaps she read them to remind herself of what Grey had suffered, and of what he had been like before he had lost his first wife.

Or perhaps she was seeking to learn more about her husband—a man who laughed warmly one moment, then became cold the next.

“I cannot tell you how happy you have made me,” she continued reading, pushing her misgivings away, “by agreeing to be my wife. I only regret that so much time must pass before I make you mine.…”

Grey knelt on one knee in the Lancasters’ parlor before his beloved. He had come to see Diana at her merchant father’s well-appointed Williamsburg home, bringing along his best friend, Christopher Lightfoot, who had been appropriately impressed by Diana’s beauty and charm. Grey had been pleased by his friend’s reaction. This angelically beautiful creature was going to be his … assuming, of course, that she accepted his suit.

“Of course I will marry you, Edward,” Diana said softly.

Grey kissed her hand several times, rather carried away by her answer, before rising to his feet and looking down into her face. He felt an utterly boyish smile of joy cross his countenance but could do nothing to prevent it.

“You may kiss me,” she told him.

He bent and kissed her. His kiss was full of ardor, the kiss of a young man who loves a woman for the first time, and who feels loved in return. Her kiss was restrained, almost cold, the chaste kiss of a properly brought-up young lady. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he wondered if he would want to be kissed like that for the next fifty years, but he suppressed the thought quickly. He should not be disappointed
by her restraint; ladies could not be expected to kiss like whores.

“I am going to build you the most spectacular house in the colony” he told her enthusiastically, sitting down on the settee and drawing her down next to him. She permitted him to hold her hand as they talked. “I have already drawn up the plans, based on
Palladio Londinensis, or The London Art of Building,
as well as some other English books I was able to obtain at the
Virginia Gazette
printing office here in Williamsburg. It will be a large and impressive house—a suitable foil for your beauty, my dear.”

Diana smiled politely at the compliment as he went on with the enthusiasm of youth, “It will even make the governor’s mansion look shabby by comparison!”

Having seen her father’s house, he was even more pleased with his decision to build a larger and finer mansion. The Lancaster dwelling was a brick cube in the Georgian style, with two enormous chimneys rising above its hipped roof It was a lavish home inside and out. Clearly Diana was accustomed to every luxury. He was determined to give her all that she was accustomed to—and more.

Jennifer placed the letter back into the desk, staring blankly into space. Then, as if moved by a sudden irresistible impulse, she snatched up the quill that lay on the desk, dipped it into her silver inkpot, and began laboriously scribbling on a piece of parchment.

There was so much she wanted to say to her husband, words that she could never dare speak, but could write. She would pour out her feelings for Grey onto parchment, then hide the letters away in the desk forever, just as she had learned to conceal her feelings behind her calm and unemotional facade.

She had so
much
to tell him.

Yet, after a few awkward sentences, she threw the quill down in disgust. She simply did not know enough words to describe her feelings accurately. It was utterly impossible
for her to express what she felt, for her vocabulary was inadequate to the task.

She had no way, no way at all, to express what she felt for Grey.

But for the first time in many long years, she felt a great deal.

A
s the summer progressed, Jennifer continued to study reading and the harpsichord, as well as the intricacies of how a lady managed a large plantation. At the ordinary, she had done all the menial labor, such as spinning, sewing, cooking, and washing clothes. As the wife of a wealthy planter, however, she was not expected to do the work, simply to supervise. She learned how to plan meals, how to determine when a hog needed to be butchered to replenish the smokehouse, and when new cloth should be woven. (Homespun cloth was used at Greyhaven to clothe the field hands, and it was also shipped to England and sold there.) She had to decide when the scuppernong grapes should be harvested and made into wine, and when the peaches should be made into preserves and peach brandy. There was a remarkable amount to learn and remember.